A writer looking for campaign development

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Devoted2K
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A writer looking for campaign development

Post by Devoted2K »

I am a writer and a poet looking to bring simple ideas to light as epically written campaigns. I have some spare time to tame and I would of course prefer to do so within a group or team based project of acceptable potential.

I do not mean to offend any light hearted developers at all, but I do find the vanilla campaigns (often modifications as well) to be quite simple and overwhelmingly devout to the mythical/fantasy base plots we've seen repeated in numerous movies, books and games. It would be exciting to bring a solid emotional story to any campaigns under current development or realization.

I guess before I commit to this I should be asking if anyone truly follows the stories, falling deeply into the center of the campaigns while playing. Is the majority attracted solely the gameplay?

I wait anxiously for replies and will respond as soon as I am able.

Please, put an end to the boredom that so vigorously plagues my frontal lobes. :(
gotrek860
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Post by gotrek860 »

Of course we love the stories ( well I do, I rarely play MP for that reason as well...). And if you want you can even write fan fiction for this blog.http://wesnoth.dbzer0.com/blog/

Or tell us of your ideas and what you would like to do..
Simply register. And we'll be more than happy to hear from you.

You can also post all your ideas here. but the blog, is neater.
You like gold? you don't care about Kings or wizards? You hate elves? then be a Griffoon Lad
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db0
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Post by db0 »

Hello Devoted, welcome to the forum. I also think like you to a degree. I don't really like vanilla campaigns of good vs evil, elves vs orcs etc. I like something more out of the ordinary.\

Currently I am working on a campaign based on the saurian race and I could use some help with the dialogue and story. If you're interested, send me a pm and we can discuss.

Also, as gotrek said, you are always welcome to write fan fiction if all else fails ;)
Dave
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Post by Dave »

Hi and welcome.

I think probably the best thing for you to do would be to create a proposed story outline for a campaign. Then you could pitch it and see if people find it interesting.

It is fairly likely though that to get things going you will have to learn how to develop the basics of a campaign yourself. Then once you have something working, you can try to get other people interested in helping you.

It is very very rare [1] that people who are previously strangers will come together and be able to work on something solid without any kind of detailed design or the beginnings of an implementation. Usually someone has to make the first move by making something fairly solid and then hoping other people will like it enough to improve it.

David

[1] I don't think I've ever seen it happen on any aspect of Wesnoth
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
Devoted2K
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Post by Devoted2K »

I would say that in general you are right. Fortunately people seem to carry ideas in thier head they want to see pieced together in a more gracious or professional manner, and I believe it is possible to simply be that person.

I will be writing some campaigns to pitch later on as I go, but I do not believe I need worry at this moment. I am looking to add to great minds, rather then isolate my own ideas at this point in time.

In fact, I may be drawing my attention to db0's campaign already, that will be seen when he responds via PM.

Thank you for your response Dave and also for the welcome. It appears to be a humble community so far. :D
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db0
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Post by db0 »

Devoted2K wrote: In fact, I may be drawing my attention to db0's campaign already, that will be seen when he responds via PM.
You've got pm already ;)
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Simons Mith
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Post by Simons Mith »

Bear in mind you don't get a huge amount of dialog in which to establish your story. There's about 20 lines of dialog in The Elves Beseiged, for example, between all speakers. Brevity is vital. A campaign with 12 scenarios - I'd suggest a maximum of around 200-300 lines of dialogue the lot. I haven't taken a dialogue census of other scenarios, but I believe The Elves Besieged is wordier than average.
delirium
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Post by delirium »

Brevity is vital.
Not necessarily. Personally, I enjoy lengthier, wordier campaigns. I often discard newly downloaded campaigns if I find too many grammatical errors or spelling errors. A bad start in the general story of the campaign also leads to immediate deletion. One example would be A New Order, which was extremely disappointing, both story-wise and grammatically. Invasion from the Unknown is currently my favorite campaign - the story is wonderfully written and edited, and very much unique. Heir to the Throne has a good story too, but I'd consider dialog and background information in HttT to be too brief. I completely support your cause, Devoted2k, and am glad that someone has been able to point this out. I've recently left Wesnoth untouched because of lack of good campaigns.
vicza
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Post by vicza »

Simons Mith wrote:but I believe The Elves Besieged is wordier than average.
I think the 'wordiest' scenario in httt is 'Choice must be made', after the 3rd choice was added. :) But 'The Elves Besieged' -- never thought it had too much words.
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orcish_orc
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Post by orcish_orc »

I believe campaigns should be wordier - in the right places.

I've played some (not all) of the official campaigns, and I notice that all the narrative always gets stuffed into the intro screen with a (sometimes black) background that pops up every time right before a scenario.

Even worse, most of the dialog is then finished within the first turn of the scenario. I tend to skip all of it.

What I would like to see (and would help to do) is for the dialog to be placed through the scenario, as it is now they're too clumped up.
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Simons Mith
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Post by Simons Mith »

Perhaps I should quantify; by 'wordier than average' I only meant 'a bit wordier than average'. Perhaps +20%, at a guess? That is quite reasonable for an opening scenario, because it has some extra setup work to do.

Whever you introduce a new character or a new plot element, you have licence to produce some more material. If it's just a straightforward battle, there should generally be less chatter. If you want lots of talk, make an all-talk scenario - and they should be used sparingly. Probably no more than one scenario in ten.

I do agree with orcish orc that having more dialogue spread throughout a scenario rather than a big block at the beginning would be better but of course 'event-driven dialogue' requires extra care in the WML.

For myself, the amount of talk throughout The Rise of Wesnoth is about right.

My point about brevity - well, even 30 lines of dialog is only a few hundred words. That's really not very much. It's a page or two of a movie script. You can expand it a bit from that, but you can't write a novella.

Actually, doing a word count for message= in the HttT campaign gives around 726 hits for 27 scenario files, but some of those are conditional messages that won't necessarily appear; so the average scenario in HttT has between 20 and 25 lines of dialogue. (so I overstated things above, when talking about The Elves Besieged)
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